Everyday Practices
Living With My Mind
For a Kinder Relationship With Your Thoughts
US$6 5 practices · 10 tracks · listen or download
Get the pack · US$6We spend our whole lives with our minds. Some days the mind helps us plan and create. Other days it’s harsh, and hard to live with. Most of us were never taught what to do about that.
The mind is doing its best to protect us, in the only way it knows. When we start to see that, we can stop fighting it. We can let it chatter, and choose what we say back to ourselves. I call this Validating Self-Talk.
These practices are about living alongside the mind with a little more kindness. There’s a short talk with affirmations, a longer affirmations practice for the mind, and a meditation that uses your breath as a point of connection. Two more use a picture, rain on a window and an echo in a cave, each followed by a letter to your mind and a rhyming affirmation.
Hello Mind and Thoughts Like Rain come in three versions each, and The Echo Chamber also comes without the letter. The other two tracks come in one version.
What’s inside
Not My Friend, Nor My Enemy
9 min
For when your mind feels like the enemy. We go to The Wisdom of The Waves for a short teaching on the negativity bias. The mind evolved to keep you safe, and today the threats are rejection and uncertainty rather than tigers. The inner critic only has one approach, ‘just like a five year old’. Then some Validating Self-Talk: letting the mind chatter, and choosing what gets your energy. It ends with the affirmation ‘These thoughts are echoes, not my voice.’
Hello Mind
3 versions
Full version · 18 minShorter version · 13 minMicro version · 7 min
An affirmations practice for your relationship with your mind. It begins by settling in and noticing what your mind is up to, and whether your thoughts come as pictures, words or something like a sound recording. After a count up from 1 to 10, the affirmations thank the mind for what it’s helped create, and move towards seeing yourself as the witness behind the thoughts. The shorter version skips the settling in and starts at the count. The micro version goes straight to the affirmations and ends sooner.
Points of Connection
12 min
A meditation for coming back to this moment. You close your eyes and notice what you can see behind them, then add the movement of your breath, two points of connection at once. If your mind is busy, you can hear or see the words ‘in breath, out breath’ in time with your breathing. Distraction is expected. Every time you notice it and come back, that’s ‘a win, not a moment of failure’.
Thoughts Like Rain
3 versions
Full version · 10 minLetter and affirmation · 5 minThe story · 4 min
For when one small thought takes over. You’re warm inside, looking out at the rain. A big raindrop forms on the glass and your mind won’t leave it alone, until it’s all you can see. You look through it again, and notice Nelly, the cat from number 11, crossing for more milk. Then a letter to your mind, and the affirmation ‘The rain is no problem, it’s there to observe.’ The shorter versions are the letter and affirmation, or an earlier telling of the story on its own.
The Echo Chamber
2 versions
Full version · 11 minWithout the letter · 7 min
For when one unkind thought keeps repeating. You stand in a vast, cool cave and call out, and the words echo back: ‘I’m not good enough. I can’t do this.’ Then you stand still and listen without reacting, until the echoes soften and you can hear your breath and the water dripping. A few questions follow, then a letter to your mind and the affirmation ‘I am the silence that softens them all.’ The shorter version leaves out the letter.